Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness Before 1914 (Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry)

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant marriage of art and science
Review: MADNESS IN AMERICA: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914 is a delectably readable, in depth investigation of mental illness during a time when few kind words for the clinically insane were in vogue. Psychiatry hadn't really evolved into a respectable zone of medicine until Freud and people with now well-defined disorders of the mind were grouped into madhouses and insane asylums populated by tertiary syphilitics, victims of brain tumors, and mentally retarded unfortunates. This 'untouchable' status left the population free to derive all manner of perverse etiologies from demonolgy to withcraft to religious punishment and that opened the door for not only charlatans but also for artists of every field to interpret whatever they wished. As the keenly gifted authors Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes have researched and described in this lavishly illustrated tome, madness was a much maligned yet rich source of inspiration for scientists and artists alike. Extensive illustrations of the ghastly tools of the asylum doctors' trade are interwoven with beautiful and accurate renderings of the human nervous syatem and etchings, drawings and paintings by well known artists whose works were never thought to reflect madness until this volume. This book could (and most assuredly does) easily stand on its own; the fact that it accompanied an exhibition showing the drawings, instruments, and art inspired by madness during a learned physical documentary in 1995 only adds to the richness of this venture. Kudos to the authors, the publisher, and the curators for a true gift to the realm of scientifically artistic investigation.

Rating:
Summary: visually rich
Review: This book is full of illustrations, paintings, political cartoons, photographs beautifully reproduced in a generous scale. Easily readable, with cultural references from slavery and native american relocation, romantic poetry and painting, "quack sciences" (phrenology), "women's problems". Highly recommended.